


Job Description

by ikebukuro



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blackfrost - Freeform, F/M, Frostbite, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 09:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikebukuro/pseuds/ikebukuro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He asks it casually one day, the two of them sitting in the living room of Tony's palatial home, sipping tea and being quietly absorbed in the light of a lazy Sunday afternoon.  </p><p>"What services, exactly, do you perform for your organization, Agent Romanoff?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Job Description

He asks it casually one day, the two of them sitting in the living room of Tony's palatial home, sipping tea and being quietly absorbed in the light of a lazy Sunday afternoon. He's reading — a large tome, written in an arcahic language that might, to the uneducated, seem primarily composed of squares and squiggles. She's flipping through a briefing packet for an upcoming mission, eyes scanning over the pages of the dossier systematically.  

He is as interested in her text as she is in his — not that they will ever say it. But he does ask, because he cannot help himself.  

"What services, exactly, do you perform for your organization, Agent Romanoff?"

She looks up from the file slowly, absently. "Mh?" She pretends not to have heard him, he knows — but she did and he knows that too.

He repeats himself anyway and memorizes the way her shoulder rocks in a shrug of nonchalance that is undoubtedly calculated to look half-hearted. Her answer is a casual murmur when she says, "Whatever I need to."  

He watches her, unblinking, as she watches him back — they don't look away from each other for a long while, each daring the other to say something more on the subject. But she's not discussing it and as much as he wishes to pry, he bides his time.  

She will give him more, when she feels like it. If there's anything he's learned about the woman, it's that she is anything but easily cracked.  

So instead of pressing the matter, he inclines his head again over his tome. "I see," he says, half-whispered, as if he were absorbed suddenly by some interesting incantation. 

She makes no reply, none aloud in any case, but he senses the movement of her body as she shifts subtly in the embrace of the armchair, crossing one leg over the other and bowing her head over the file again. 

They pass the rest of that afternoon in a comfortable, but knowing silence. 

* * *

He is wandering the Tower halls in the dark, though why he cannot say. Everyone has long since been abed and if he had any sense, he would do so as well — but the Tower is silent, still, and he finds that it is easier to think in that stillness, to wonder and to contemplate.

It isn't until he rounds the corner into the kitchen that he realizes he is not as alone in the silence as he thought — and ponders, just for an instant, how even after a mission that has kept her away for an unexpected three months, he still hopes/knows it will be her sitting there at the kitchen's island, drinking some blend of aromatic coffee that floats to him as if on a breeze as he closes the distance between them. 

"I was not aware you had returned." 

She doesn't turn to look at him, but answers anyway, her voice soft, huskier than he remembers it. "I just got back." 

"How was it?" He rounds the island slowly, eyeing the cup of coffee in front of her. "It must have been quite arduous to have kept yo—" He breaks off mid-sentence as his gaze finds the circle of bruises around her wrist, the cracked skin on her knuckles, pinkened and healing but clearly abused. His eyes flick upward to her face, find the vast, empty cold in her gaze, and the flicker of something sharp like glass there too, as if she dared him to say something —  _anything_.  

He found his tongue unexpectedly twisted and tied in the suddenly dry hollow of his mouth. 

It takes a moment for her to break his gaze — just a moment in which she shifts in her seat subtly and her hair slides across her delicate shoulder to reveal, for an instant, an ugly, unbroken line of scarlet/violet bruising wrapped around her throat. A second later it's gone again, hidden as she raises the coffee cup to her lips and draws a long sip from what must be a scalding brew — the steam twists in front of her eyes as she watches him over the rim. 

He still says nothing. 

It takes another moment, or three, before she speaks and when she does, her voice is still husky. 

"It was an unexpectedly long assignment. But it's done now." 

Why it takes him so long to find his voice, he doesn't know. But when it comes, he finds his words uncharacteristically hesitant to come to his lips, his tongue heavy.  

"What... did you do?" 

Her smile is a wry, humorless thing where it sits crookedly on her lips; it's only now that he notices the lower is puffier than normal, a swollen petal that accentuates her sensual mouth in a way that is both heartbreaking and terrifyingly attractive. But that smile is a brief, feral thing — a baring of teeth, like a cornered wolf. She taps her nails against the coffee's vessel, just once, her lashes dipping momentarily before they rise again, her gaze colored by some unnameable hunger. 

"What I had to."

**Author's Note:**

> An older piece I wrote months ago, kinda a prequel to Unspoken. Dedicated - as anything of mine featuring Loki usually is - to Claire. Because she is Loki's vessel on Earth. #Truth.


End file.
